Letter to Geico Concerning their denial to members about their sponsorship of The Shield

August 25, 2005

Janice Minshall
Assistant Vice President and Director of Corporate Communications
Geico
One Geico Plaza
Washington, DC 20076

Dear Ms. Minshall:

Recently I have received an influx of calls, letters and e-mails from our members bringing to my attention Geico's response to their letters of concern regarding your company's advertising on a TV program called The Shield. I was extremely disappointed when I had learned that Geico is telling our members that your company has never advertised on The Shield. This statement, as you are aware, is simply not true.

On April 11th, 2005 the PTC sent out a letter to all the companies that were advertising on The Shield informing them of the show's subject matter and requesting they withhold their media dollars until the program no longer celebrated such offensive content. We also requested a response regarding this issue by April 30th. We received nothing from Geico pertaining to the letter.

In early May the PTC contacted your Marketing Director, Bill Bower, and informed him that we had viewed advertisements by Geico on The Shield and requested that your company consider pulling these advertisements from this program due to its graphic and violent content. The PTC also informed Mr. Bower that we would be going public informing our members of those companies that had no objection to underwriting this show's content. Mr. Bower made it clear that he had no concern for the content of this program and that Geico had no reason to consider our request.

The PTC moved forward informing our members which companies would continue to support The Shield. Following our announcement, Geico received many letters and phone calls from our members regarding sponsorship of this program. Subsequently, our office received a call from Tyra from your marketing department requesting that the PTC inform our members that Geico will no longer be advertising on this program and had not advertised on The Shield since your 2nd quarter of business.

If Geico knowingly had advertisements on The Shield, why then are you sending letters to our members stating that your company had never advertised on this program? I find this to be outright deceitful and dishonorable.

A retraction and an apology to our members is in order. Please respond within 10 days of this letter as we will be issuing a press release concerning this issue.

I trust this is sufficient information for you to correct your course of action and offer an apology to both the PTC membership. Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions and if it will help resolve this issue.

Sincerely,

L. Brent Bozell
Founder and President
Parents Television Council

cc: Olza M. Nicely, CEO
Senator Joe Lieberman
Senator Sam Brombeck